


Blue Blood

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:50:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Jackson, we found your biological family."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Blood

**Author's Note:**

> A fixit for a casting rumor.
> 
> Thanks to Iulia and Miss Molly Etc for audiencing and encouraging this!

Jackson spent a week deleting Derek's texts and voice mails--every single one was a terse demand to meet somewhere isolated, which, fuck no, he had not been born yesterday--and the infinitely creepier polite emails signed _Peter Hale_ , and then the inevitable happened. He hadn't really gotten the hang of his senses yet, and since he had to constantly filter out the presence of other werewolves at school, he didn't sense the trap until it closed on him, and he was alone in the locker room with Derek and Peter, their accomplice Isaac disappearing down the hall even as Jackson thought about yelling.

He folded his arms and glared instead. 

"I already told you, Derek, I'm not joining your little pack of freaks. And you," Jackson looked Peter up and down and sneered, even as he noted that the guy at least had better taste in clothes than Derek, "I will not hesitate to set you on fire again if you lay one hand on me. Lydia's been dying for a chance to undo everything you forced her to do."

"What Lydia helped me with is between me and Lydia," Peter said calmly, with a little smile that made Jackson want to tear his throat out-- _nothing_ was between this middle-aged werewolf serial killer creep and Lydia. 

Derek made an irritated noise, not quite a growl, and said, "Jackson, you're in danger."

Even before Jackson could tell Derek that he fucking _knew_ he was in danger, two fucking _murderers_ had cornered him alone in the locker room, Peter smacked Derek's arm. Derek's threatening look transformed into a kind of hilarious expression of long-suffering irritation.

"This is your problem, Derek, you lead with the stick when you should be leading with the carrot," Peter said, casually chiding. 

He looked at Jackson and said, overenunciating like he wanted Derek to repeat after him, "Jackson, we found your biological family. They're werewolves just like you were always meant to be, and they want to meet you." 

Jackson felt a weird rush of hope and wanting, his heart suddenly pounding and the wolf coming out--he felt his claws and teeth break the surface, his eyes flash bright--and he shut his eyes and turned his face away, forcing all of it down. 

"No," he growled, and when he was sure of himself he looked up, looking back and forth from Derek to Peter. "No. You're lying. My real parents died when I was born."

"Just before, actually," Peter agreed. "You were born almost half an hour after your mother died--that's pretty weird, you know, for you to have survived that. That was wolf blood--wolf strength--that saved you. But it was also a trauma that drove the wolf in you into hiding. It's what caused you to become the kanima after Derek bit you. All werewolves are susceptible to the circumstances of their births. Derek was born in a thunderstorm, and look how he turned out."

Derek got a really weird look on his face, and his heartbeat skipped--not in surprise, exactly, Jackson thought, but he hadn't expected Peter to say that, and he was sort of embarrassed by it. 

Jackson shook his head firmly, staying focused on the actual point, which was that they were liars. "My parents are dead, so what the hell are you talking about."

Derek rolled his eyes really expressively, and Peter slapped the side of his head without looking away from Jackson. "We mean your pack, Jackson, the one you were always meant to belong to. Your parents were werewolves, and so were your mom's parents, and her sister and brothers, and their kids. There's a whole pack out near Reno that thought you died with your parents--look, they sent us a picture."

Peter offered him a folded sheet of paper and Jackson couldn't help reaching out to snatch it away. He froze when he saw it: two people, grinning, the man's arms around the woman, and it could be a picture of him and Lydia in ten years, if Lydia were taller and blond and ... and pregnant. But the guy had Jackson's jawline, his nose, the same color hair in a tragic mid-90s cut. The woman--he thought maybe her ears looked familiar, the exact blue of her eyes, but his gaze kept dropping down to stare at her big round belly under the pastel shirt, and he couldn't, he never....

"That's you," Peter said softly. "No brothers or sisters. You were their first. That was taken a couple of months before you were born."

"This is, this has to be fake," Jackson insisted. "Or else they're not werewolves. Their eyes--"

"Ambient light--" Peter said, at the same time Derek huffed, "Colored contacts." 

The Hales turned and looked at each other, and Jackson looked helplessly back down at the photo. Those people could be his parents, they could, they--

"Wait, no, why--if they had family, why didn't--" _Why didn't they want me sixteen years ago_ , but that was obvious, wasn't it? He seemed human when he was born, apart from surviving his mother's death. Defective, to them. They hadn't wanted him until he turned out to be a wolf after all. His lip drew back from his teeth in a snarl.

"They didn't know," Derek snapped. "Your parents were carrying fake ID, they'd gotten into trouble with the police in California during a dispute with a couple of other packs. They were trying to get home when they got into the accident, which may have been caused by one of those other packs, no one really knows. The police were going off the ID on the bodies, so they couldn't find any next of kin. The Hartfield alpha, your grandmother, she sensed your parents' deaths. You weren't born until after their link with the pack was broken, so she couldn't sense you. She thought you died with your mother, so they didn't know to look for you."

"But the Hartfields did look for Wendy and Tim," Peter continued, nodding toward the photo. "They put the word out to other packs, about two werewolves lost suddenly that summer, the female being pregnant. I don't know why we didn't make the connection with your parents; our alpha at the time must have assumed they were human. It's pretty rare for a car accident to succeed in killing a werewolf, and the dispute started well outside our territory. We knew nothing about it."

"How," Jackson said, and he heard the pleading note in his voice, the want to believe them. He tried to force it down, but it kept pushing up. He needed Lydia here, to poke holes in their story and prove it wasn't true. He couldn't trust anyone else, especially not these two, he knew that, but--but if there was a chance--if it was true, that he'd always been meant to be a wolf, that he'd always belonged somewhere else.... "How did you find out it was me, after all this time? Why would you put it together now?"

"Your eyes are blue," Derek said flatly, like that explained anything. His eyes had always been blue.

"He means, _blue_ ," Peter said, rolling his eyes even as he flashed them, and they glowed the same electric blue Jackson had seen in the mirror. "Blue eyes mean werewolf blood, so once we knew you were a born wolf we tracked down the information about your biological parents and put it together with the lost Hartfield wolves. Your grandmother is still alpha. Her name is Ellen Hartfield, and her number is on the back of the photo."

Jackson didn't let himself look. "You said I was in danger. The packs that killed my parents--"

Derek shook his head sharply. "That ended with your parents. They'd never take revenge on a child."

"Then the Hartfields--"

"They do want you back, but they know you have parents and a life here," Peter soothed, but Jackson couldn't help thinking _not my real parents, not my real life, not what I was meant to have_ \--except Lydia, of course he was meant to be with Lydia--but _his family_ \--

"Then _what_ ," Jackson demanded, swallowing all that stupid hope, his voice coming out clogged with it.

"There's an alpha pack in town," Derek said grimly. "They police packs that draw too much attention to themselves, and we've been drawing a hell of a lot of attention lately. They'll grab any wolf who doesn't belong to a pack--they already took Erica and Boyd when they tried to run away. You need to either join my pack, or you need to get in touch with the Hartfields and make sure you have their protection."

Jackson folded his arms, tucking the photo carefully against his ribs as he did.

Even before Jackson could tell Derek to go to hell, Peter sighed, clamped one hand down on Derek's shoulder, and said, "You need to get in touch with the Hartfields, Jackson. As soon as you can."

Jackson gritted his teeth but nodded, and stood his ground until Peter towed Derek away.

His knees went out a second later, and he landed hard on the bench and then dug into his bag, pulling out his phone. His hands were shaking. He knew he should call Lydia first--but what could he tell her, what could he ask her--what if she told him it was all a lie? He lowered the paper and turned it over, saw the writing on the back and punched in the number, trying to steady his breathing, to hold in his teeth and claws as he listened to the ringing on the other end.

"Ellen Hartfield." 

She didn't sound like a grandma--not quavering and weak, not polite and cool and distant. She sounded busy, gruff, in control. 

"Hi," Jackson said, and then winced. She hadn't bothered with any of that. "This is--I'm--my name is--Jackson," and for the first time in his life he didn't want to stress the _Whittemore_. "I'm in Beacon Hills, the Hales, they--"

"Oh, sweetheart," she said, and he stopped cold, hair standing up on the back of his neck. "God, don't you sound just exactly like your dad. I've been waiting a long time to hear your voice, Jackson."

His chin went down. He wanted to curl around the phone, wanted to crawl inside it to get closer to that voice, closer to _his alpha_ , because he knew. The second she said his name he knew where he belonged. He knew what pack meant, what he'd been waiting for all this time. This was why he'd never been the least bit tempted to say yes to Derek Hale.

"Can I," he said, and he had to stop and wipe his eyes, had to clear his throat before he could get the words out. "Please, I want to come home."


End file.
